When you are fighting for your freedom you are a guerilla, a freedom fighter, a militiaman, a patriot, a minuteman, or whatever. Every nation has known people fighting for a just cause. By just, I refer to the greater good.
If during your insurrection, you bomb innocent civilians then that act, not against an oppressive government, is straight terrorism. You are labeled a killer or a murderer because that act takes you outside the protection of action against a government. It's straight evil, accidental or not, to kill innocents at any time for any reason. Some can then call you a terrorist with justification.
Timothy McVeigh may have had some rationale, but his bombing was terrorism.
But now consider a proxy war. Allies outside of your country deem you a freedom fighter and supply you with arms and ammunition. You are fighting a struggle for freedom with sympathetic justification.
Of course other nations align with opposite factions.
Your allies call your opponents "terrorists". Your opponents' allies call your faction "terrorists". Neither claim may be true. But that doesn't matter.
Labelling you a terrorist now justifies attacking your bases. It's not dependent in the proxy war context on whether or not you commit murder outside justification. It's a convenient label to justify involvement.
In fact, outside nations that attack rival factions in a local conflict are the terrorists. They are murdering women and children and blaming it on local opponents. It gets swept away in the justification that the terrorists are local.
This is the hypocrisy of the meaning of terrorist. It's relative morality cynically applied.
If during your insurrection, you bomb innocent civilians then that act, not against an oppressive government, is straight terrorism. You are labeled a killer or a murderer because that act takes you outside the protection of action against a government. It's straight evil, accidental or not, to kill innocents at any time for any reason. Some can then call you a terrorist with justification.
But now consider a proxy war. Allies outside of your country deem you a freedom fighter and supply you with arms and ammunition. You are fighting a struggle for freedom with sympathetic justification.
Of course other nations align with opposite factions.
Your allies call your opponents "terrorists". Your opponents' allies call your faction "terrorists". Neither claim may be true. But that doesn't matter.
Labelling you a terrorist now justifies attacking your bases. It's not dependent in the proxy war context on whether or not you commit murder outside justification. It's a convenient label to justify involvement.
In fact, outside nations that attack rival factions in a local conflict are the terrorists. They are murdering women and children and blaming it on local opponents. It gets swept away in the justification that the terrorists are local.
This is the hypocrisy of the meaning of terrorist. It's relative morality cynically applied.
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